You’re invited to a special event co-sponsored by the UC Davis Center for Healthcare Policy and Research and the Center for Poverty & Inequality Research. Join us April 30, 12-1:30 p.m. PST, via Zoom.

Rita Hamad, associate professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, will discuss:

1. The theoretical and practical motivations for studying social policies and health;
2. The pandemic-era expansions to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; and
3. The impacts of pandemic-era SNAP expansions on health and health equity.

Rita Hamad is a social epidemiologist and the director of the Social Policies for Health Equity Research (SPHERE) Center at the Harvard School of Public Health. Her research focuses on the pathways linking social factors like poverty and education with racial and socioeconomic disparities in health across the life course. In particular, she studies the health effects of social and economic policies using interdisciplinary quasi-experimental methods to generate actionable evidence to inform policymaking. She serves as an advisory editor for the journal Social Science & Medicine and an associate editor at Health Affairs Scholar. In 2020-2022, she was the James C. Puffer American Board of Family Medicine / National Academy of Medicine Fellow. She provides consultation to state and federal legislators on the design of poverty alleviation and social safety net policies. Hamad mentors trainees at all levels in population health and health equity research, and lectures about the effects of social policies on health inequities. She saw patients as a family physician for 10 years in safety net clinics throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, although she is no longer a practicing doctor.

Co-Hosted with the Center for Healthcare Policy & Research

Register Here